Nuptial metamorphosis: masculine perspectives on the transformation of women during their wedding night in nineteenth-century France (2018)
In nineteenth-century France, many writings were given over to describing the wedding night. This was seen as an event more important for wives than for husbands, because of the loss of their virginity. Some texts went further and saw in the wedding night the occasion of a total transformation that affected women alone. Written by men for male readers, these considerations were far from being simply the fruit of literary ramblings, misogynist superstitions or old-fashioned popular representations: they were built on scientific discourses that confirmed and often inspired them. Thus these masculine representations lacked the balance that was characteristic of gender relationships in the nineteenth century. Rather than being confined to the supposedly most obvious bodily changes (the loss of virginity and breaking of the hymen) the changes arising from the wedding night were seen as affecting the woman’s whole being, physical and moral.
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